I saw Medea, the Euripides play from 431 BC, performed at UCLA starring Annette Bening this weekend.
The set and staging were a bizarre mix of Los Angeles skid row and Euro-trash techno, but Annette Bening stood above all that and gave an intense and moving performance of a mother who, when betrayed by her husband, kills his new bride and murders her children.
They may not be two Oscars she is holding, but Annette Benin came from the stage and proved she knows how to rule one.
Sarah Palin melted down in a rambling, winking, almost illiterate resignation speech as a 4th of July present to the people of Alaska and to the rest of America.
Oh, she has plans, too big to discuss in front of the evil liberal media… like … FOX News? John King of CNN?... David Letterman?
Look, the Bill Kristol-wing of the Republican Party hand picked this idiot to be John McCain’s running mate in 2008 because they saw their neocon dreams going down in flames. The fact that that dream also brought down the United States of America doesn’t matter to them.
They manipulated John McCain, who was never their man, never really one of them, but too weak to defend himself when presented with the Party’s ultimatum of Sarah Palin.
Is Bill Kritsol proud this 4th of July? Is he smirking, knowing that Sarah Palin will be back someday and he will be proven right? I fucking hope so.
Sarah Palin and Bill Kristol are insane. This brand of Republican Party hero has had their day and the day was lost.
The Republican Party, both politicians and media, need to follow Sarah Palin’s example and leave the stage. You stole the American Century and trashed the nation. Thank your god you are not all in jail or up against a wall.
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It seems some Democratic Senators have a “if you build it, they will come” plan for national health care. Okay, let’s see it, but what about a full-court, fuck the Republican Party press on a strong Democratic Party national health care system?
Be brave. Be strong. You are fighting for America… act like it. The Republican Party has acted in bad faith on this issue. So they don’t get a seat at the table. The Democratic Party needs to be willing to kick a little ass when it has to, for the good of the American people.
We deserve that much for putting up with Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich and The Contract With America and the George Bush, Jr. /Dick Cheney take over. You have the ball. Run with it!
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Afghanistan…so it begins.
“When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Go, go, go like a soldier…
Poem of The Week offers up Galway Kinnell's How Many Nights to start 2009.
"How I came to practice poetry is little bit of a mystery to me," says the Pulitzer Prize-winning Galway Kinnell. "I came to love poetry when I discovered, in a little anthology in my parents' bookshelf, the poems of Edgar Allan Poe in particular." - Galway Kinnell
'
How Many Nights
How many nights
hive I lain in terror,
O Creator Spirit, Maker of night and day,
only to walk out
the next morning over the frozen world
hearing under the creaking of snow
faint, peaceful breaths . . .
snake,
bear, earthworm, ant . . .
and above me a wild crow crying 'yaw yaw yaw'
from a branch nothing cried from ever in my life.
Mix a little foolishness with your prudence: It's good to be silly at the right moment. Horace
Horace, a poet of the Pax Romana. A friend of Augustus and Maecenas
In 39 B.C., after Augustus granted amnesty, Horace became a secretary in the Roman treasury. In 38, Horace met and became the client of the artists' patron Maecenas, who provided Horace with a villa in the Sabine Hills. Augustus favored Horace, commissioning him to write the Carmen Saeculare for the Secular Games of 17 B.C."
Today is birthday of the Roman poet Virgil, born way back when in 70 BC. Hung out with Augustus, Maecenas and that crowd.
Wrote the Aeneid.
“Meanwhile the sky revolves and night rushes from the ocean, wrapping in its mighty shade earth and heaven and the wiles of the Myrmidons. Through the town the Teucrians lay stretched in silence; sleep clasps their weary limbs. And now the Argive host, with marshaled ships, was moving from Tenedos, amid the friendly silence of the mute moon, seeking the well-known shores, when the royal galley had raised the beacon light – and Sinon, shielded by the gods’ malign doom, stealthily sets free from the barriers of pine the Danaans shut within the womb. The opened horse restores them to the air, and joyfully from the hollow wood come forth Thessandrus and Sthenelus the captains, and dread Ulysses, sliding down the lowered rope; Acamas and Thoas and Neoptolemus of Peleus’ line, prince Machaon, Menelaus, and Epeus himself, who devised the fraud. They storm the city, buried in sleep and wine; they slay the watch, and at the open gates welcome all their comrades and unite confederate bands."
Poem blogging with William B. Yeats.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer; (SARAH PALIN)
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, (BUSH-o-NOMICS)
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned; (2008 ELECTION)
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. (MCCAIN SUPPORTERS)
Surely some revelation is at hand; (DOW DOWN)
Surely the Second Coming is at hand. (MCCAIN/PALIN)
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert (ARIZONA)
A shape with lion body and the head of a man, (JOHN MCCAIN)
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? (JOHN MCCAIN)
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We are nationalizing the banks. FDR and The New Deal are being resurrected.
We all know FDR you half-wit and you are no FD-fucking R.
President George Bush, Jr. has destroyed the economy. He has done more damage to Wall Street than the terrorists on 9/11. He needs to be blamed and chants of BUSH MUST GO! need to be heard throughout the land, every day until the next Inaugural.
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Cindy McCain claims Senator Obama endangers her son in Iraq. Is shed fucking kidding? Her husbands very existence dangers her son's existence in Iraq.
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Sarah Palin leads chants of “Kill Obama” and winks at the crowd. She like to hunt and kill.
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John McCain is booed at his own rallies by confused Republicans. Their TV and radio keeps saying Obama is a terrorist. John McCain defends Obama, they boo.
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Dick Cheney has already retired. He could give a shit about the state of the economy.
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Republican Congress men, whose fingers still smell of little boys’ assess, have stuffed their pockets with billions and are getting ready to be retired.
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Despite the news media’s best efforts to cover the Republican Party’s demise, I believe the Election of 2008 will be a sea change in American politics.
If not, then I predict the end of American politics.
- - Jesse Helms, a mean, foolish, racist five-term Republican Party Senator from North Carolina died at age 86. His legacy is that of a leader of the hate-spreading conservative American spirit. Whenever we, as Americans get too haughty and brag about our democracy and freedom and liberty, remember we are also Jesse Helms.
- - Re-writing 9/11 history before Bush, Jr. leaves office…The new official history of the September 12, 13, 14 executive order given by President Bush after the 9/11 attacks to allow members of the bin Laden family and other Saudis to leave the country despite the total lock-down of flights over America is now being re-written. If you try to find information about this act of Presidential.. Treason?... Stupidity?… Saudi bullying of Bush, Jr.?... you get a story that states the good bin Ladens and other goodSaudis were allowed to fly out of America for their own safety (because Americans would have hurt them) AFTER… AFTER the flight ban was lifted and after the FBI cleared each and every one of them. I am not a journalist, I am just a blogger, but maybe ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and FOX News could send some reporters out to investigate the truth. It is important to history.
Also, there is finally a documentary out, in Britain at least, that explains WTC 7’s collapse into its own foot print on 9/11…. fire. We were all just conspiracy theorists and the fire in Building 7 melted the structure in such a way, THANK GOD!... that the building collapsed in the same way an imploded building would, a free-fall into its own footprint...no pancaking, no toppling. That’s a relief. Go with God, George W. Bush!
- - Senator Barack Obama is getting a little taste of what it is like to run as the Democrat Party nominee for President. He is not only up against the Republican Party candidate and the Republican machine, but also the national media. He has got print, radio, and TV against him. The Internet is still mostly his and the popular progressive blogosphere has been busy cleaning up his messy week. FISA, abortion, Iraq funding support, Iraq withdrawal issues…it is tough stuff this running for office.
I want a Democratic Presidential nominee who is threatening, on day one, to arrest Bush, Jr. Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, et al. That would be change and hope for America’s future. No more bullshit.
- - Interesting week too, for General Wesley Clark. Man, the national media does not let anyone get away with swift boating Republican Party candidates, do they? I mean when Dan Rather went after Bush, Jr.’s military record, we never saw him again. And I haven’t seen this much indignation expressed on TV news since Al Gore was trying to contest the 2000 election decision. When John Kerry’s war record was attacked in 2004, the media ran with the story daily for the entire election cycle, without checking any facts. Book TV seemed to have an open invitation to John O’Neill and Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry all summer and all fall.
- - California is on fire again. It bumped the Midwest floods off the hourly TV News cycle.
- - Gasoline is going up and helping to fuel the economic crash the Republican Party has, once again, left the American people. Why is there still a Republican Party?
- - Stop this day and night with me and you shall possess the origins of all poems… Not a lot of time for reading this week, but did celebrate the 4th of July with Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass.
DeLillo’s Underworld sits on my nightstand, untouched for two weeks.
- - I don’t know if this falls under Music or Film or Television, but three times this week I came across the movie (the movie based on the musical based on the movie) Hairspray, the ending to be specific, a big song and dance extravaganza with John Travolta in drag. The music is infectious, but the images were grotesque, especially the woman. I think there was supposed to be a point in their somewhere about what is beautiful and sexy, thin vs. fat, black vs. white. I think fat was a metaphor for gay, but I’m not exactly sure.
- - "Google must divulge the viewing habits of every user who has ever watched any video on YouTube, a US court has ruled." This could be a big one, folks. Google vs. Viacom and YouTube views may hamper all the free videos weblogs feature on their sites.
Viacom said it wanted the data to "compare the attractiveness of allegedly infringing video with that of non-infringing videos." Saywhatifyousuckdick?
Viacom, which owns MTV and Paramount Pictures, has alleged that YouTube is guilty of massive copyright infringement. Don’t worry, its not about porn, it is all that unfiltered news, very un-American, that we have been looking at. Americans should not be viewing anything that has not passed through the corporate filters. Just look at the trouble all those 9/11 conspiracy videos have caused.
Fuck Viacom!
The bustle in a house
The morning after death
Is solemnest of industries
Enacted upon earth.
The sweeping up the heart
And putting love away
We shall not want to use again
Until eternity.
When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd
Walt Whitman (1865)
1
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd,
And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night,
I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
Ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring,
Lilac blooming perennial and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love.
2
O powerful western fallen star!
O shades of night -- O moody, tearful night!
O great star disappear'd -- O the black murk that hides the star!
O cruel hands that hold me powerless -- O helpless soul of me!
O harsh surrounding cloud that will not free my soul.
3
In the dooryard fronting an old farm-house near the white-wash'd palings,
Stands the lilac-bush tall-growing with heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
With many a pointed blossom rising delicate, with the perfume strong I love,
With every leaf a miracle -- and from this bush in the dooryard,
With delicate-color'd blossoms and heart-shaped leaves of rich green,
A sprig with its flower I break.
4
In the swamp in secluded recesses,
A shy and hidden bird is warbling a song.
Solitary the thrush,
The hermit withdrawn to himself, avoiding the settlements,
Sings by himself a song.
Song of the bleeding throat,
Death's outlet song of life, (for well dear brother I know,
If thou wast not granted to sing, thou would'st surely die.)
5
Over the breast of the spring, the land, amid cities,
Amid lanes and through old woods, where lately the violets peep'd from the ground, spotting the gray debris,
Amid the grass in the fields each side of the lanes, passing the endless grass,
Passing the yellow-spear'd wheat, every grain from its shroud in the dark-brown fields uprisen,
Passing the apple-tree blows of white and pink in the orchards,
Carrying a corpse to where it shall rest in the grave,
Night and day journeys a coffin.
6
Coffin that passes through lanes and streets,
Through day and night with the great cloud darkening the land,
With the pomp of the inloop'd flags with the cities draped in black,
With the show of the States themselves as of crepe-veil'd women standing,
With processions long and winding and the flambeaus of the night,
With the countless torches lit, with the silent sea of faces and the unbared heads,
With the waiting depot, the arriving coffin, and the sombre faces,
With dirges through the night, with the thousand voices rising strong and solemn,
With all the mournful voices of the dirges pour'd around the coffin,
The dim-lit churches and the shuddering organs -- where amid these you journey,
With the tolling bells' perpetual clang,
Here, coffin that slowly passes,
I give you a sprig of lilac.
7
(Nor for you, for one alone,
Blossoms and branches green to coffins all I bring,
For fresh as the morning, thus would I chant a song for you O sane and sacred death.
All over bouquets of roses,
O death, I cover you with roses and early lilies,
But mostly and now the lilac that blooms the first,
Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes,
With loaded arms I come, pouring for you,
For you and the coffins all of you, O death.)
8
O western orb sailing the heaven,
Now I know what you must have meant as a month since I walk'd,
As I walk'd in silence the transparent shadowy night,
As I saw you had something to tell as you bent to me night after night,
As you droop'd from the sky low down as if to my side, (while the other stars all look'd on,)
As we wander'd together the solemn night, (for something I know not what kept me from sleep,)
As the night advanced, and I saw on the rim of the west how full you were of woe,
As I stood on the rising ground in the breeze in the cool transparent night,
As I watch'd where you pass'd and was lost in the netherward black of the night,
As my soul in its trouble dissatisfied sank, as where you sad orb,
Concluded, dropt in the night, and was gone.
9
Sing on there in the swamp,
O singer bashful and tender, I hear your notes, I hear your call,
I hear, I come presently, I understand you,
But a moment I linger, for the lustrous star has detain'd me,
The star my departing comrade holds and detains me.
10
O how shall I warble myself for the dead one there I loved?
And how shall I deck my soul for the large sweet soul that has gone?
And what shall my perfume be for the grave of him I love?
Sea-winds blown from the east and west,
Blown from the Eastern sea and blown from the Western sea, till there on the prairies meeting,
These and with these and the breath of my chant,
I'll perfume the grave of him I love.
11
O what shall I hang on the chamber walls?
And what shall the pictures be that I hang on the walls,
To adorn the burial-house of him I love?
Pictures of growing spring and farms and homes,
With the Fourth-month eve at sundown, and the gray smoke lucid and bright,
With floods of the yellow gold of the gorgeous, indolent, sinking sun, burning, expanding the air,
With the fresh sweet herbage under foot, and the pale green leaves of the trees prolific,
In the distance of the flowing glaze, the breast of the river, with a wind-dapple here and there,
With ranging hills on the banks, with many a line against the sky, and shadows,
And the city at hand with dwellings so dense, and stacks of chimneys,
And all the scenes of life and the workshops, and the workmen homeward returning.
12
Lo, body and soul -- this land,
My own Manhattan with spires, and the sparkling and hurrying tides, and the ships,
The varied and ample land, the South and the North in the light, Ohio's shores and flashing Missouri,
And ever the far-spreading prairies cover'd with grass and corn.
Lo, the most excellent sun so calm and haughty,
The violet and purple morn with just-felt breezes,
The gentle soft-born measureless light,
The miracle spreading bathing all, the fulfill'd noon,
The coming eve delicious, the welcome night and the stars,
Over my cities shining all, enveloping man and land.
13
Sing on, sing on, you gray-brown bird,
Sing from the swamps, the recesses, pour your chant from the bushes,
Limitless out of the dusk, out of the cedars and pines.
Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song,
Loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe.
O liquid and free and tender!
O wild and loose to my soul -- O wondrous singer!
You only I hear -- yet the star holds me, (but will soon depart,)
Yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me.
14
Now while I sat in the day and look'd forth,
In the close of the day with its light and the fields of spring, and the farmers preparing their crops,
In the large unconscious scenery of my land with its lakes and forests,
In the heavenly aerial beauty, (after the perturb'd winds and storms,)
Under the arching heavens of the afternoon swift passing, and the voices of children and women,
The many-moving sea-tides, and I saw the ships how they sail'd,
And the summer approaching with richness, and the fields all busy with labor,
And the infinite separate houses, how they all went on, each with its meals and minutia of daily usages,
And the streets how their throbbings throbb'd, and the cities pent -- lo, then and there,
Falling upon them all and among them all, enveloping me with the rest,
Appear'd the cloud, appear'd the long black trail,
And I knew death, its thought, and the sacred knowledge of death.
Then with the knowledge of death as walking one side of me,
And the thought of death close-walking the other side of me,
And I in the middle as with companions, and as holding the hands of companions,
I fled forth to the hiding receiving night that talks not,
Down to the shores of the water, the path by the swamp in the dimness,
To the solemn shadowy cedars and the ghostly pines so still.
And the singer so shy to the rest receiv'd me,
The gray-brown bird I know received us comrades three,
And he sang the carol of death, and a verse for him I love.
>From deep secluded recesses,
>From the fragrant cedars and the ghostly pines so still,
Came the carol of the bird.
And the charm of the carol rapt me,
As I held as if by their hands my comrades in the night,
And the voice of my spirit tallied the song of the bird.
Come lovely and soothing death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later delicate death.
Prais'd be the fathomless universe,
For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,
And for love, sweet love -- but praise! praise! praise!
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.
Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet,
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,
I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.
Approach strong deliveress,
When it is so, when you have taken them I joyously sing the dead,
Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of thy bliss, O death.
From me to thee glad serenades,
Dances for thee I propose saluting thee, adornments and feastings for thee,
And the sights of the open landscape and the high-spread sky are fitting,
And life and the fields, and the huge and thoughtful night.
The night in silence under many a star,
The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know,
And the soul turning to thee O vast and well-veil'd death,
And the body gratefully nestling close to thee.
Over the treetops I float thee a song,
Over the rising and sinking waves, over the myriad fields and the prairies wide,
Over the dense-packed cities and all the teeming wharves and ways,
I float this carol with joy, with joy to thee O death.
15
To the tally of my soul,
Loud and strong kept up the gray-brown bird,
With pure deliberate notes spreading filling the night.
Loud in the pines and cedars dim,
Clear in the freshness moist and the swamp-perfume,
And I with my comrades there in the night.
While my sight that was bound in my eyes unclosed,
As to long panoramas of visions.
And I saw askant the armies,
I saw as in noiseless dreams hundreds of battle-flags,
Borne through the smoke of the battles and pierced with missiles I saw them,
And carried hither and yon through the smoke and torn and bloody,
And at last but a few shreds left on the staffs, (all in silence,)
And the staffs all splinter'd and broken.
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,
I saw the debris and debris of all the dead soldiers of the war,
But I saw they were not as was thought,
They themselves were fully at rest, they suffer'd not,
The living remain'd and suffer'd, the mother suffer'd,
And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffer'd,
And the armies that remain'd suffer'd.
16
Passing the visions, passing the night,
Passing, unloosing the hold of my comrades' hands,
Passing the song of the hermit bird and the tallying song of my soul,
Victorious song, death's outlet song, yet varying ever-altering song,
As low and wailing, yet clear the notes, rising and falling, flooding the night,
Sadly sinking and fainting, as warning and warning, and yet again bursting with joy,
Covering the earth and filling the spread of the heaven,
As that powerful psalm in the night I heard from recesses,
Passing, I leave thee lilac with heart-shaped leaves,
I leave thee there in the door-yard, blooming, returning with spring.
I cease from my song for thee,
From my gaze on thee in the west, fronting the west, communing with thee,
O comrade lustrous with silver face in the night.
Yet each to keep and all, retrievements out of the night,
The song, the wondrous chant of the gray-brown bird,
And the tallying chant, the echo arous'd in my soul,
With the lustrous and drooping star with the countenance full of woe,
With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird,
Comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep for the dead I loved so well,
For the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands -- and this for his dear sake,
Lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul,
There in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.
